


count your blessings (not your flaws)

by taizi



Series: is there a better bet than love? [7]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Families of Choice, Gen, Guilt, Introspection, M/M, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Reconciliation, and gabriel has to pilot the new program, and he's stuck on earth for a year in a human body and doesnt take to it swimmingly, essentially god is making time off mandatory, gabriel and the terrible horrible no good very bad day, they're making a start at it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22519195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: “You don’tfeel,Aziraphale,” Gabriel had told him impatiently, cutting through his stammered attempts to explain. “You don’t need food or warmth. Just turn those parts off and focus on your work.”To his credit, Aziraphale had done as he was asked, for the most part. He cut back significantly on his miracles, and Gabriel remembers being proud of Heaven’s wayward, bumbling agent. He remembers thinking it couldn’t have been easy, being stuck on Earth, and that Aziraphale ought to be allowed some time to figure out what things were necessary and what things weren’t.Now, though, Gabriel wonders how in the hell Aziraphale managed without using a miracle foreverything.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Gabriel (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: is there a better bet than love? [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1406680
Comments: 88
Kudos: 643





	count your blessings (not your flaws)

“Time off?”

Gabriel’s voice is loud enough to echo even in the closed space of Michael’s office. Her expression is displeased and she looks with such deliberation at the chair in front of her desk that Gabriel sits before he can think too hard about it. 

Time doesn’t exist in Heaven as it does on Earth, but Gabriel can’t remember the last time he was called into his big sister’s office. It must have been when he was still new, though he rarely thinks back that far. 

“What is this about, Michael?” he can’t help but ask. “Are you trying out ‘jokes’?” Sandalphon is trying to make jokes happen, but Gabriel didn’t think Michael would be on board with that.

Her deadpan expression is very clearly a ‘no,’ and Gabriel feels a little foolish for having suggested it. Michael lifts a paper from her desk and offers it. 

“This came straight from the head office, Gabriel, so please don’t try to talk your way out of it.”

Speechless for probably the first time in his ageless life, Gabriel takes the page. It’s strange to hold, the way starstuff was strange to hold in the Beginning, when infinite hands had pooled it into his much smaller ones and laughingly told him to ‘go make something bright.’ The gold lettering is both bold and strangely hard to read, as though each letter shifts and shimmers when his eyes move to the next. 

But the message is clear.

“I received this after our… misinterpretation of the Great Plan,” Michael says delicately. “She worries our perspective is too narrow. She wants us to broaden our horizons. So you’re going to be piloting a new program.”

Gabriel’s mouth twists, something heavy and sick happening inside his form at the idea that the Lord is unhappy with their work. It had all seemed like it was going right, a war in the making for six thousand years, only for the whole operation to trip up just before the finish line. 

It was easy to blame a wayward Principality and his demonic counterpart, at least at first. But when the dust had settled and both executions had failed, it was time to admit that if it had been meant to happen, it would have happened. 

And since it didn’t happen, Heaven and Hell had got it wrong. 

“Time off?” Gabriel asks again. It’s a real question this time, and Michael’s expression softens.

“Not as long as you might be thinking. At least, not at first. A year on Earth, in a physical corporation. Immerse yourself in life down there, and then come back to share your experiences.”

It sounds like a punishment. Gabriel works very hard to keep that thought out of his head. 

“Well!” He manages to sound cheerful, pushing himself to his feet. “No time like the present, is there? Literally. Sooner I get down there, the sooner I come home.”

“Wait,” Michael says. “The whole package, Gabriel.”

The very meager scraps of good attitude he’d managed to claw together deserts him almost immediately at the implications. “What? No. That’s not fair.”

Michael points at the paper in his hand. “Take it up with Her if you really think so.”

“Oh, sure, I’ll just do that.” Gabriel clenches his fist-- the one not holding the missive-- and then loosens it again. The _whole_ package. Nerve endings and messy chemicals and… organs. “Fine. Ugh. I’ll corporate fully when I get down there.”

“Please do.” Michael looks worried for him, a crease in her brow that gives away she’s not quite as sold on this whole idea as she’d like everyone to think she is. “Call if you need anything.”

Her care goes a long way in unruffling Gabriel’s feathers. All of this is hardly his sister’s fault. He works up a smile that he even halfway means, and nods decisively for the benefit of them both. 

“It’s only humanity,” he says good-naturedly. “And only for a year. If a stupid Principality can do it, anyone can.”

She smiles back. Gabriel feels good about that, and says a quick farewell to Uriel and Sandalphon without answering any of their startled “what? why?”s before he catches the next Earthbound elevator and starts his reluctant journey. 

It’s an Effort to fill out his body the way it’s meant to be filled. He’s got the gist of it; he remembers when Adam was on the drawing board and the Makers were hovering eagerly around God’s limitless form to watch bone and muscle and blood come together into a strange amalgamation of electricity and meat. He knows where the stomach is supposed to go, and how big the lungs are supposed to be, and how many ribs belong on each side of the cage that guards his useless, pounding heart. 

For a split-second Gabriel thinks he might cheat and dial back the nerves in his skin-- do as he’s bid, but without the sensations that so often cause Aziraphale to bungle even the simplest of assignments getting in the way-- but self-preservation chimes in and reminds him that his all-knowing Creator would not be pleased if he cut corners. 

So he’s human when he steps outside, for all intents and purposes, and he’s hardly prepared for it. 

The sun is high and bright overhead, that little star that a little red-haired Maker had so much fun with. Gabriel remembers the angel filling the star with enough life and fire to sustain God’s garden for much longer than the six thousand years it would need, and asking “Why not? Why can’t I? What if the humans need it for longer than that?” when told it was too much. 

The sun didn’t feel like anything to Gabriel then. Just a handy way to keep a curious angel occupied, a bit of an eyesore in the relative darkness of space.

It feels like _everything_ now. It feels like all the life and fire that red-haired angel poured into it some six thousand years ago, a light designed at the Beginning to be bright enough to reach through space itself and touch this planet, nourish it and keep it warm in the icy vastness of the universe. 

It feels the way Heaven used to feel, when everything was New and he only had to lift his eyes to find God, so surrounded he was by Her presence, always. 

He stands there for a long time, just feeling the prickling, pleasant heat on his skin. 

* * *

Gabriel realizes very quickly where he might have been rather unfair. 

Frivolous miracles, he’d called them, every time Aziraphale was summoned for an audit. Using Heaven’s power for little, inconsequential things, _Earthly_ comforts. Drying out sodden clothes, restoring food left to go bad, warming up a poorly-insulated room in the midst of the coldest season.

“You don’t _feel_ , Aziraphale,” Gabriel had told him impatiently, cutting through his stammered attempts to explain. “You don’t need food or warmth. Just turn those parts off and focus on your work.”

To his credit, Aziraphale had done as he was asked, for the most part. He cut back significantly on his miracles, and Gabriel remembers being proud of Heaven’s wayward, bumbling agent. He remembers thinking it couldn’t have been easy, being stuck on Earth, and that Aziraphale ought to be allowed some time to figure out what things were necessary and what things weren’t. 

Now, though, Gabriel wonders how in the hell Aziraphale managed without using a miracle for _everything_. 

Within the last hour, Gabriel has almost gotten himself discorporated half a dozen times. It takes a constant effort to bend reality just enough that the London crowd doesn’t bowl him over on the sidewalk, and he doesn’t even think they’re actively _trying_ to. The hum of humanity, the busy swarm of them in every direction, is not a slight against him. 

It’s just that, right now, Gabriel is as small as they are. He’s another grain of rice in the bowl God set on the table.

He nearly walks in front of a bus following the poor example of a jaywalker, and it’s only the quick grab of the back of his jacket by the burly man behind him that saves Gabriel an unfortunate and embarrassing trip Upstairs. 

Gabriel hardly knows how to handle being so casually _touched_ by a human. Most of his interactions with their kind have involved a lot of screaming and hand-wringing and repeated declarations on his part to _‘Be Not Afraid.’_

But the man who grabbed him doesn’t look afraid. He looks annoyed. He says, “How ‘bout you watch where you’re goin’, mate? Hardly wanna see a bloke smeared across the kerb while I’m on my way to lunch.”

“Right,” Gabriel says. “Absolutely. My mistake.”

Something about his voice makes the man roll his eyes and mutter “typical.” But then the mass of humans around Gabriel are suddenly surging through stilled traffic as though following a signal he must have missed, and Gabriel is buoyed along. 

He finds a quiet place to sit, and puts his head in his hands.

Earth has never felt like this before. Gabriel has never been this disoriented and overwhelmed. It’s an odd feeling. All of the feelings so far had been odd. But he’s less and less certain that he’s being punished, and more and more certain that there is something here for him to learn. For the life of him, though, he doesn’t know what it is. 

“S’cuse me,” a voice asks, somewhere behind his shoulder. 

Gabriel looks up. A young woman with dark skin to match the dark hair hanging over her shoulder in a thick braid is looking at him with a worried wrinkle in her brow. Ridiculously, her expression makes him think of Michael. Even more ridiculously, it manages to be a comfort. 

“If you just need to sit a moment, that’s a’right,” she assures him. “I can grab you a water if you need. But if you’re here to eat, I can take your order.”

All at once, Gabriel’s mind and his body try to go in two separate directions. Immediately, he wants to recoil from the notion in disgust. _Gross matter,_ he thinks, and lets himself be repulsed by the notion of _food_ churned into paste inside his mouth and throat. It wouldn’t go to waste inside his body if he didn’t let it, but in that case, what would the point of the first half of the act be? Because it _feels_ good? 

But his body, faithful temple that it is, betrays him. The smells wafting from the door of whatever little shop he’s ended up at are enticing, something spicy and smoky. It smells _good._ Perhaps it was a mistake to hook up his olfactory senses, after all. 

The girl is waiting for an answer. She looks at him as though she’s worried he might fall over. 

Gabriel reaches into her mind for the information he needs. Then he reaches into his pocket and imagines a wallet there, with the right amount of currency for this transaction, whatever that may be. 

He’s reminded of scolding Aziraphale for a miracle exactly like this one, and something uncomfortably like guilt makes his newly eager stomach do a nauseous flip. 

“I’ll have whatever you recommend,” Gabriel says.

The kebabs taste of ginger and garlic, chunks of chicken and sliced vegetables that tear away from the skewer so tenderly it’s a marvel, but Gabriel’s heart isn’t in it. In fact, he barely tastes it all. 

He’s thinking about Aziraphale. How could he not be, wandering around the city the Principality has so plainly staked as his own. He remembers when Aziraphale was New, how he was often too excitable to sit still, his feathers a downy mess as he fidgeted through every older angel’s attempt at grooming them. Gabriel was one of the few that could corral him, with a patience born first of amusement and then of true fondness. He remembers being pleased to be assigned as Aziraphale’s supervisor. He remembers being proud of Aziraphale’s meticulous attention to detail, the care he took that saw him rising up the ranks in his choir, the sense of duty that saw him assigned to Eden’s Eastern gate. Gabriel often bragged about his platoon, but Aziraphale was one of his favorites. 

“He’s odd,” Uriel said once. “He likes it down there too much.”

“Why shouldn’t he?” Gabriel asked. “Earth is God’s creation, after all, he _should_ like it.”

But he quickly saw what she meant. Aziraphale reported in with a shining eagerness that didn’t really belong in Heaven after the War, so removed from the efficient company uniform. He wanted so badly to share things about the humans, about the world, that sounded mundane and uninteresting to everyone else. 

“They’ve come up with the most amazing things,” he said once, showing Gabriel a sculpture he’d borrowed for the occasion. “Look, this is what they think angels look like. Isn’t it beautiful?”

It had looked like a human with a pair of wings sprouting from its back. Not remarkably imaginative at all. Gabriel hadn’t even tried to bend his perspective, to squint his eyes and see it the way Aziraphale must have seen it. 

“It’s fine, I guess,” he’d said fairly. “Now, what can you tell me about the miracles you were sent to perform?” 

Another time, Aziraphale had been late to a meeting, and Gabriel had had to go out and find him. It was a little embarrassing to have to go collect a truant agent, and he’d been in a bad mood by the time he’d found Aziraphale, sitting by the engorged bank of some river churning angry yellow water, covered in filth down to his last feather. There was a ruined human settlement behind him, a small body cradled in his arms, and a blank look in his eyes that should have worried Gabriel far more than it did at the time.

“What the hell are you _doing?”_ Gabriel had asked shortly. “Playing in the dirt? You have a _job_ to do, Aziraphale, I can’t keep cleaning up after you when you decide to take a little holiday. Let’s _go_.” And when the Principality slowly stood, on legs that seemed too brittle to bear his weight, he was still holding the little body to his chest. “Leave that. What good is it doing?”

Aziraphale blinked, not really seeing him. Lowered the dead child back to the ground and pulled a blanket out of nothingness to cover her with. Gabriel felt his temper spike at the waste of a miracle and left him there to make his own way back to Heaven.

A flood. Aziraphale always had a hard time with floods. Always had a fondness for the short-lived humans. Always seemed to suffer with them, as though their pain was his own. 

More than one hundred and thirty years later, Gabriel realizes he should not have left Aziraphale alone that day by the yellow river. He realizes Heaven had left Aziraphale alone quite a lot, in a world that was big and full and dangerous. He made his own way, and it isn’t a way Gabriel would have agreed with, but Gabriel was hardly _there._

And someone else always was. 

* * *

It takes less than a day for Gabriel to give in to gravity and follow Aziraphale’s bright, unmistakable aura to the bookshop. He shines with Holy light, the way he’s done since he was brand New. After the failed Apocalypse, Gabriel might have guessed his light would be a little tarnished. If anything, it seems to shine all the brighter. 

Gabriel knows better than to think that he'll be welcome, but he has a lot of questions. He doesn't know what to do with them all. He's never had so many questions, even before it stopped being safe to have them. 

There are a series of spectacular wards that reach out as far as the end of the street. The bitter snap of demonic energy, and the electric pulse of angelic, and the clean, steady glow of witchcraft, all twined together like a nest of writhing serpents. They pass over Gabriel with subdued malice, promising in no uncertain terms what his fate would be if he meant any harm. Every step he takes is measured and cautious, regardless. 

There are a group of people lingering outside the shop, hunched over what looks like a… civet. Gabriel would have thought this was the wrong continent for them, but that department has been a mess since the Great Flood. 

“…never go for it,” one of them is saying, “ _never._ You’ve lost the plot.”

“It’s a cat! Crowley _loves_ cats!”

They aren’t people, Gabriel realizes. They’re a strange mix of not-people, an angel, two demons, and a boy that might once have been human. The angel is holding the cat, a large, scruffy creature that barely fits in the confines of their corporeal arms, and arguing hotly with the larger of the two demons, while the smaller demon and the former human peer through the shop doors as though keeping watch for something. 

“Alright, fine,” the larger demon snaps, “what about Zira? _He_ doesn’t love cats.”

The former human rolls his eyes, jumping into the conversation to add, “Yeah, but he loves _Crowley_. He’d move to the moon if Crowley _really_ wanted to go. So we just have to get Crowley on board.”

“Fitzwilliam,” the smaller demon says without warning, in a voice barely louder than a whisper. 

“What? No,” the larger demon says. “Stop coming up with weird names for a cat we won't even get to keep.”

“Wait,” the angel says. They’re looking around, eyes darting through the steady traffic of people on the sidewalk. They shift until the former human is squarely behind them, moving the cat into the crook of one arm so the opposite hand is left free. “Wait, the wards are humming. They’ve never hummed before, what does that mean?”

The demon they had just been arguing with is at their shoulder now, and she spots Gabriel before the rest of them do. Her human form trembles, demonic energy leaking through in her sudden panic, and Gabriel doesn’t have time to say a word. 

_“Shit!_ Inside, get inside!” She shoves everyone else through the door before ducking through herself, and then slams it hard enough the window panes shudder. 

Gabriel would _like_ to say that this was overkill, but he knows better. He does. Whoever these young creatures are, they belong here in a way that Gabriel does not; their familiarity with the wards would be proof enough, even if their familiarity with Crowley and Aziraphale wasn’t. He’s past feeling alarmed that the line between angels and demons seems to be getting thinner all the time. 

He’s past feeling _allowed_ to feel alarmed at that. You lose that right when you invite a demon Upstairs to borrow its hellfire for an ill-advised execution.

It's surprisingly nerve-wracking, walking up to that door. _Two_ Principalities have staked a claim here, and Archangel or not, Gabriel doesn't really like those odds in _their_ domain.

The bell above the door rings merrily as it's opened. He steps inside, taking in the place for the first time as it's meant to be taken in; this is someone's home, has been for hundreds of years, and Gabriel is a guest. An unwelcome one, at that. 

“Grem, you didn’t _lock_ it?”

“What the fuck do you think a _lock_ is gonna do, Warlock? Nanael, I swear to somebody, get back here--”

Nanael, Gabriel thinks. A Newer angel, comparatively. He has no idea how they managed to make their way to Earth, or why they fell in with the one Heaven has labeled a traitor, but now is probably not the best time to ask. 

He isn’t used to disobedience. His ranks are usually subdued with a speaking glance, he rarely even has to raise his voice, but guardians _do_ tend to be a prickly sort when it comes to the people or places they’ve been tasked with. Nanael has passed Warlock the cat and is raising a scepter as though they mean to use it against an Archangel. It’s both absurd and mildly impressive. 

“No need for that,” Gabriel says, waving a hand. “I’m not here for you.”

“No shit,” the one called Grem snarls. Her teeth are too long to pass for human anymore, her face losing shape until it more closely resembles the snout of a beast. “Why the fuck didn’t the wards spit you out? Zira said they were as close to perfect as anything could be that your precious Mother didn’t make Herself.”

“Let him talk, Gremory,” Nanael says suddenly, eyes wide with focus. “Just stay behind me.”

Gremory sputters with incoherent rage until the smaller demon grips her arm. Pleased to have someone sensible to talk to, and eager not to have to talk to demons and other weird immortals holding weird cats, Gabriel turns back to the Principality. 

“Thank you,” he says with feeling. “I’m here to speak to Aziraphale.”

“Thought you were done with him. Every office got a memo that said he was out of bounds.”

Gabriel shakes his head impatiently. “This isn’t about _that._ This is about something else.”

“What?” Nanael asks implacably. They remind Gabriel, suddenly, of the Principality Daniel, and the infuriating way she has of never rising to meet anyone’s temper. He wonders if she and Nanael know each other. 

“You don’t have high enough clearance to hear it,” Gabriel says shortly. Nanael’s scepter comes up an inch or two.

“Then you don’t have high enough clearance to stay here.”

“Oh, for--” He surges a step forward, all six wings threatening to unfurl in a show of menace. “Don’t pretend like you hold a candle to me, child.”

To their credit, Nanael only trembles for a moment. Behind them, Warlock’s eyes light up with a fury that looks like a horrifying combination of Hell at its best and Heaven at its worst. He surges forward against Gremory’s hold and grips the back of Nanael’s sweatshirt with stubborn fists. 

“You’re outnumbered, _asshole,_ ” Warlock rages. “The minute you try something, the wards are gonna fry you straight out of that stupid body. They’re making your hair go all static already.”

It’s true. He can feel them building, the faint buzz on his skin a clear warning.

This is getting out of hand. Gabriel’s corporeal form is energized but in a sickly way. He feels jittery with it, as though he has to move and shout and keep up the motions because something terrible will happen the moment he falls still. He just needs _answers._ He needs someone to _explain_. 

“Good job stalling for us, Feathers,” an unfortunately familiar voice says from the door. “I’ve got it from here.” 

And then, with a sudden and brutal collision, Gabriel is forced back against a wall. A few books are knocked from the shelves on either side of him, and a clawed hand digs into his throat with menacing promise. 

Yellow eyes glare out at him from a hateful face. Aziraphale’s demon, the serpent Crowley. His other hand is full of hellfire. Even from arm's length, it burns. 

“Oh, my,” says Aziraphale. “Perhaps not, dearest.”

“He tried to kill you,” Crowley hisses. “Don’t tell me _perhaps not._ ”

“Well, there is that.” It’s a mild-mannered angel who steps up to Crowley’s shoulder, not seeming to mind the proximity to hellfire. But he wouldn’t, would he, given his proven resistance to it? “What brings you here, Gabriel? You should have warned me you were coming. I might have arranged a warmer welcome for you.”

“We’re really gonna chat like this?” Gabriel manages. His windpipe feels halfway crushed. He’s surprised at how much it hurts not to be able to breathe when the body actually needs it. “Your pet is trying to _kill_ me.”

Something cold comes and goes across Aziraphale’s face. He touches Crowley’s hair with a doting hand. 

“If he insults you again, you may do as you like,” he says pleasantly. 

From behind them, Gremory says, “Holy _shit._ ”

Grimacing, Gabriel lifts his hands. “Alright, I got it. Message received. I’ll watch my mouth. Now would you--”

But Crowley isn’t playing along. Crowley is angry like the ocean is deep. And from this close, with no choice but to pay attention, Gabriel sees it. As plain as day, right out in the open. This fury, rooted to the last inch in _love._

Oh. 

“Remember the wards, my darling,” Aziraphale is saying in a quiet voice. The flippancy is gone from him now, his hand traveling to rest at the nape of Crowley’s neck as though it has rested there a thousand times. “We’re safe here. We made sure it was so. It was a combination of ours and all of our friends’ hard work. You can let him go.”

“He tried to have you burned,” Crowley grits out. He looks as though he’s talking through a mouthful of poison, a wound he’s been nursing for years. 

Aziraphale says, “He won’t try again. Not here.”

It’s a long moment before Crowley finally lets go. Gabriel draws in a haggard breath, and another, and Aziraphale studies him with a scholar’s curiosity. 

“You can’t mean any harm, or you wouldn’t have gotten this far,” he says thoughtfully. “Though intent is often a muddied thing. The Crusaders didn’t think they were doing any harm either, did they?”

“I _don’t,”_ Gabriel spits. “For the love of God, you think I _want_ to be here? I don’t have a choice.”

Crowley bristles at his tone, but Aziraphale only tilts his head. 

“He wouldn’t tell me,” Nanael reports from somewhere behind him. Their voice is shaky. “He said my clearance wasn’t high enough.”

Crowley stalks in that direction with a furious, bitten-off sound. Aziraphale moves more solidly between Gabriel and the rest of his strange flock and looks as though he isn’t truly worried about the Archangel one way or another. 

To be fair, the wards are extremely impressive. 

“What have you done to Nanael?” he asks in a tone that an idiot might mistake for polite. “If it’s something lasting, there won’t be anything I can do to hold Crowley back this time. He’s rather protective.”

Gabriel rubs at the marks left on his neck and believes him. “I just lost my temper. Shouted a bit.”

“Hmm. Easy to do when you’re talking to someone so much smaller than you.”

“Yes, exactly!” He realizes a moment later that Aziraphale was not being genuine, and Gabriel has made himself look bad. “Ugh. Look, this isn’t about _them,_ it’s about _me._ ”

Aziraphale’s expression goes from bland to absolutely blank. “Of course it is. Go on.”

“I’m stuck down here for a year, because of some vacation program that God wants me to pilot, and I don’t… I don’t understand anything. It’s all so different to the times I was here before. It’s louder, and heavier, and… and more. There’s more humans down here than there ought to be, isn’t there? We must have lost track of it somehow.”

The Principality is staring at him, and it occurs to Gabriel how _other_ he must seem. Aziraphale has lived on this planet for the last six millennia, has learned its customs over and over as they changed with time, has been human in all but mind and soul for as long as humans have been a _thing_. He has perfected the act, _enjoys_ it, and Gabriel is floundering. 

Gabriel blurts, “I ate a kebab.”

Aziraphale blinks, looking truly taken aback for the first time since Gabriel started talking. 

“Did you?” 

“It was… strange. I didn’t like how it felt in my throat, and I didn’t leave it in my stomach for long, but it tasted… good.”

There’s a hint of warmth bleeding into Aziraphale’s eyes. His face is, abruptly, a dear memory. 

It’s a face that Gabriel looked for first, back when he had been given a handful of starstuff to share-- back when they were all New and Heaven was still home and there were still red-haired angels making brilliant red stars to sustain life in a garden that God was still dreaming up. 

How had he let himself forget?

Behind Aziraphale, Crowley is crouching in front of the younger creatures, looking up into their faces with yellow eyes that don’t seem to carry rage _all_ the time. Nanael is smiling, their scepter banished, and Warlock is hefting the cat up for Crowley’s inspection, and the smaller demon is whispering in his voice like dusty parchment, too low to be heard, and Gremory’s face is human again. 

Crowley sits back on his heels, looking as though he wants to laugh.

“You named it _what?”_

“Oi, _we_ didn’t name it, _Murmur_ did.”

“Clever you, Mouse.”

Crowley musses the smaller demon’s pale hair and then lifts the big animal into his arms. His eyes flick across Gabriel’s face with umbrage, but he's grinning by the time Aziraphale turns to see what all the commotion is about. 

“Look what the monsters dragged in.”

“Oh, dear,” Aziraphale says dryly. “I hope you disabused them of the notion that we’re keeping it.”

“Angel, they've _named_ it,” Crowley says brightly. “That's an emotional connection, that is. We can’t just turn Fitzwilliam back onto the street, now, can we?”

Aziraphale rolls his eyes and seems to give up on the lot of them, turning back to Gabriel. 

“You can’t stay here. I won’t have Crowley and the children constantly looking over their shoulders in a place they ought to feel safe.”

Stunned, Gabriel says, “You can't just--”

“And you hurt me,” Aziraphale goes on, in a quiet, frank sort of way. It sounds like he’s had a lot of time to come to terms with this particular truth. “Quite a bit.”

Gabriel’s chest is an unpleasant ache. “Yes. I know.”

“You don’t,” Aziraphale corrects him, not unkindly. “You couldn’t possibly. But maybe… maybe all of this,” he waves a hand, as if to indicate Gabriel’s entire predicament, “is Her way of making sure that you will. It’s a good idea, really. Vacation. You might even enjoy it.” 

Panicked, Gabriel surges a step forward. He wants to say _But I don’t know what to do! I don’t know where to go! I have questions, I need answers!_

But he’s beginning to think he won’t find them here.

Aziraphale is watching him with those eyes that are only halfway familiar, not the angel Gabriel remembers from a time before time, but not so much a stranger, either. There’s a red-haired demon behind him, making Newer ones laugh the way he used to make stars shine. The shop towers around them all like a cathedral, like certain sanctuary, sheltering everyone who cares to call it home. 

Gabriel doesn’t belong here, in this space Aziraphale managed to carve out for himself. It’s wrong for him to even try. 

But the fact that Aziraphale has managed it-- that Crowley, and Nanael, and Warlock, and Gremory, and Murmur have all managed it-- means the odds are rather good that Gabriel will be able to figure it out, too. 

“I know I owe you an apology,” Gabriel says, straightening his shirt, trying to straighten the confused jumble of his head and his heart. “I don’t know what for yet, but I’ll come back when I do.”

Aziraphale smiles at him. It lacks the warmth and Love he smiles at the others with, but it’s something. It’s more than Gabriel probably deserves. 

“I’ll be here,” Aziraphale assures him. 

It’s unnecessary. In total disregard for the example Heaven expected him to follow, Aziraphale has _always_ been here. 

**Author's Note:**

> welp my tumblr got deactivated out of the blue, so i'm using my backup for the time being, @goodlucktai  
> feel free to talk to me there until this (hopefully) gets sorted out ! xx


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